What could be more marvelous than a romance story set in Paris around Christmas time!   This charming book reads well and I adored all the characters.

I truly adored reading this book by Rebecca Raising.  I was worried it would be too cheesy or romance-y but it was charming and made me want to immediately book a flight to Paris.  However, the ending did make me incredibly angry and want to throw the book (but I was reading on a kindle).  I do not regret reading it because I so enjoyed the time although the main character did prove to be a bit of a doormat.

Sarah finds her true self in Paris. It takes some time and a lot of hard work and patience for Sarah to come into her own. It was really pretty to read the descriptions of what Paris looks like at Christmas. There is love, laughs and heartache in this book. In the end everyone gets a happily ever after. This was a great Christmas book to read and makes me want to go to Paris during that time. There are wonderful people in this book and you will fall in love with them all and Paris. 



*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

The beautiful cover of The Little Bookshop on the Seine alone would have drawn me in, but a novel set in a bookshop? in Paris? Yes, Please! Just by looking at the book cover I know many of the boxes I would tick to want to read something would be met. I absolutely loved the novel, having an small town American girl on an adventure in Paris, running a bookshop there tugged at my heartstrings. I once went to Paris many years ago with my family, and I have been pining over Paris nearly every day since. I hope to go back one day and spend more time enjoying the magic and romance of one of my favorite places on Earth, if not my most favorite. I enjoyed the varied characters that make up the bookshop staff and loved seeing their stories unfold. This was a cute romance novel that ties things up around Christmas time so this is the perfect sweet romantic novel to usher in the holiday season here in the U.S. I recommend this book to dreamers, romantics, and francophiles.

A young, introverted bookshop owner from a small town in the U. S. steps out of her comfort zone to swap places with a bookshop owner in Paris, France. Having lived her life with her head constantly in books, she must embrace a new culture, new friends, and grow in self confidence. A romance with a freelance investigative reporter that began in her hometown hits some bumps.

I enjoyed the locale of this novel and its storyline.  Parts of the novel seemed choppy; there were some places where the flow was not smooth.  Overall, it was enjoyable, and I would be interested in other stories with these characters.

I just love Rebecca Raisin's books! This one is set in one of my favorite cities, Paris! This is the continuing love story of Sarah and Ridge. We met him and fell for him in the The Bookshop on the Corner, but fast forward... what is Ridge doing to our HEA??? He's not coming through for Sarah, and you just want him to get it together. He seems like a good guy, but our heroine cannot just sit around and wait forever. Sarah's offered the opportunity to swap bookshops with her Parisian friend. Maybe this is what she and Ridge need? Maybe she will be swept off her feet by a Frenchman? I was not sure what would happen and thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
My honeymoon was in Paris, so I enjoyed wandering it's streets and learning it's secrets as the story unfolds. Can't wait for the next book!

The Little Bookshop on the Seine by Rebecca Raisin
Source: NetGalley and Carina Press
Rating: 2½/5 stars

**MINI-REVIEW**

The Bottom Line:  I read this book cover to cover but I can’t deny the struggle I had in getting from one cover to the next.  The idea of this book, two bookshops owners swapping shops for a change of pace, scenery, and lifestyle, is quite lovely, and the Parisian bookshop is a wonderful setting, but I struggled to find a likeable character in this book and that is always going to be a deal breaker for me.  The Parisian bookshop, Once Upon a Time is so wonderfully described, I could actually see all the rooms in my head.  I just wanted all that wonderful to be populated by different characters.  For example, Sarah is so painfully naïve, she borders on stupid, not a single one of the “casual” employees are respectful, considerate, or even nice, and the full-time employees (with the exception of TJ) are just awful human beings with generally bad attitudes.  I finished this book because I kept (naively) hoping there would be a miraculous evolution in at least some of the characters.  Unfortunately, from start to finish I was disappointed.  For myself, the only redeeming quality I found in this book was the bookshop itself and that just simply isn’t enough to like and enjoy a book.

As much as I tried I just couldn’t get into this books. As I did not finish it I won’t post public review of this title.

This is a light book set in a bookshop in Paris. The characters are believable and the story as well. It made me want to rush out to Paris for the holidays.

I went into this book thinking it'd be a lighthearted romance read, and unfortunately that's not what I feel like this book is.

Sarah is the owner of a bookshop in the US. Her bookshop isn't doing well, and her boyfriend is MIA most of the time due to his job. She's feeling like she needs a change in her life instead of feeling like she's always on hold. Which, I can honestly relate to that.

Her good friend in Paris (who also runs a bookshop), calls Sarah up one day and begs her to switch places for a few months so she can get away from the love drama in her life. Sarah agrees and a few days later finds herself in Paris.

As the reader, we don't spend a ton of time getting the descriptions of Paris. We spend a vast majority of the book following Sarah as she stresses over running this very different book shop. It was just stressful and overwhelming and it was kind of hard to read, because a lot of us face those kinds of situations in jobs and I'd rather not read about it.

That said, we do learn a bit about Paris having a bunch of secret places to shop and how a lot are by invitation only or only to open to locals, and I thought that was pretty interesting. I imagine it might be hard to live in Paris with all the tourists constantly.

Sarah's boyfriend is just a disappointment. We hear so much about how hot he is and so on and so forth. But really he's absent from the majority of the book, and what we do know of him is that he's 1. terrible at communicating and 2. he's written in a way that makes it seem as though he's cheating. 

Honestly, I thought this book was going to take a turn and Sarah would fall for the mysterious man in the bookstore. But that isn't even the way it happened and I found myself incredibly disappointed. 

The secondary characters were ok. We don't really get to know many of Sarah's friends at home because we only get a short glimpse of her life there before she leaves for Paris. The Parisian secondary characters we get to know much better and they were ok too. 

Overall, I thought this was an ok read. I wasn't really impressed with the romance in the story and how this book ended.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honesty review!

I really wanted to read this book because I love stories that are set in Europe - especially France and Italy. In addition, this seemed like the perfect read for Christmas-time :). Unfortunately, while the premise of the book was promising, the execution of the story missed the mark.

The settings of the book are fantastic! I could visualize actually being in Paris and in the old-book-smelling bookshop with the main character, Sarah. However, the relationships and plot were just too contrived for me to buy in and feel compelled by the story. I needed more characterization, as well, to become fully invested.

I loved the premise of this book, but the execution fell flat in my opinion.  Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love the escape factor of this book. It was easy to get lost in the story and forget the outside world. It is a story of the search (and escape) from romance when two bookshop owners - one from a small, sleepy American town where nothing much extraordinary happens, the other from glitzy, glamorous Paris - exchange shops for a period of time. Sophie is suffering from a shattering break-up, and for Sarah, France is on her list of places to visit. When Sophie proposes a change of venue, Sarah decides it is her chance to live her life, and to be closer to her world-traveler boyfriend Ridge. Sarah's little shop and circle of friends are just what Sophie needs, but Sarah finds the adjustment to the Parisian way of life a bit more of a struggle.

The storyline is easy to follow, and it is not entirely necessary to have read the first book in the series, although it might be helpful to understand more of the backgrounds of the characters. This was an enjoyable book to read and review.

Sarah ran in small bookshop, The Bookshop Around the Corner, in tiny Ashford, CT. Sales had not been good and her landlord was threatening to raise the rent. Sarah’s boyfriend, Ridge, was a jet setting reporter whose schedule only allowed for brief visits to Ashford. Then her Parisian friend, Sophie, suggested that she and Sarah exchange places for a few months. Sophie owned a famous bookshop, Once Upon a Time, along the banks of the Seine. Sophie’s boyfriend had recently left her for a younger woman and Sophie felt she needed to be away from him for awhile.  

Sarah flew to Paris a few days later. The Parisian bookshop was as charming and busy as Sophie had promised. However quiet, introverted Sarah had a hard time taking charge of the store. The employees were mostly part timers who made their own schedules which could cause problems when the store was filled with tourists and few people to help them. Sophie had not one to delegate tasks to underlings and so Sarah found herself working into the night to complete all the required tasks and paperwork. 

Sarah made a few friends on the staff who tried to show her the French way of working with employees and also how to take time to enjoy Paris. She had hoped that being in the most romantic city in the world would inspire Ridge to spend more time with her. However in the few months she worked in Paris, he had only spent one day with her before being called away to report on a pressing news story.

In classic chick lit fashion, this story has a happy ending for everyone. I am a fan of Paris so I suspected that the story would have less to do with shy, young lovesick girls and handsome, rugged boyfriends and more to do with French life.

I received this ARC from Net Galley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Originally published in Britain in 2015, The Little Bookshop on the Seine is the first in a series of sweet romances featuring inter-related characters set in Paris..  The best feature of the book is description of the city and it's neighborhoods with particular emphasis on shops, markets, and bistros.  Notre Dame is mentioned several times, as one would expect of any book set in Paris; however, in light of the recent fire, this made the book feel dated.

Let’s see what we have here:
Christmas = yes.
Christmas + Bookshop = yes, squared.
Paris + Christmas + Bookshop = yes, yes, yes!

Do you see where I’m going with this? You do, good. Let’s get on with it then.
When Sarah’s offered the opportunity to swap bookshops with her Parisian friend for six months, she jumps at the opportunity. And why wouldn’t you? Paris is, after all, the city of love.

If you’ve read one of Rebecca Raisin’s books before, you know that this book is going to absolutely ooze with charm and all the holiday goodness you could wish for. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

I loved following Sarah as she set upon her Parisian adventure. The bookstore that she was caretaker for was utterly gorgeous, as were the characters that passed through its doors. The real clincher for me was seeing just how much Rebecca loves Paris through the eyes of her characters. Not only do you get the standard backdrop of tourist attractions (oh, my!), but you get the backstreets and alleys, the small café around the corner, and the tiny cobblestone streets that only serve to further add to the charm of this gorgeous book.

One thing that really sucks me in when reading a modern romance is this: a touch of reality. Yes, I know we escape to our fictional worlds for the book clutching glee of a happily ever after, but in order for a book to really resonate with me, I need something rooted in the here and now. The Little Bookshop on the Seine had this with Sarah and Ridge’s relationship. Neither of them was perfect, and this gorgeous story of a bookstore swap was what they needed to learn and grow.

I love travelling Paris through Sarah’s eyes. It reminded me so much of my past visits, and has made me look forward to future trips so much more!

Another book to add to the TBR list of any francophile looking for a cozy read this winter. Atmospheric and escapist.

I'm recommending this book to all my friends! Rebecca Raisin transports readers to Paris, and to the bookshop- you can practically smell the books within! I wish I had read this in December in a cozy couch, with an even cozier blanket on top, next to my twinkle lights emblazoned Christmas tree!

Sarah Smith and her friend Sophie exchange jobs.  Sophie has a bookstore in Paris and Sarah has one in a small town in the US.  Sophie is trying to escape from a bad break up and Sarah is hoping to get out of the rut she's in, maybe by running a shop in Paris she'll be able to see her globe-trotting reporter fiancee, Ridge, more often.  

What Sarah didn't realize was how buy and difficult to run the Paris bookshop would be.  Suspicious things are happening at the shop, customers are rude, and schedules are very different (as in there really isn't a work schedule, people basically work when they want.)

At first the shop is struggling under Sarah's management but can she turn it around with the help of her new coworkers?  

This is the first book I've read by Rebecca Raisin, but I'll definitely check out others in the future.  

#TheLittleBookshopOnTheSeine #NetGalley